Thursday, May 17

NYC Day 3 | Seaport, Lady Liberty, Wall Street & BROADWAY! {LONG}

We woke up Saturday morning, excited for our venture down to the South Street Seaport to purchase discount Broadway tickets.  Our tour bus tickets were actually valid until 11:59 a.m. that morning, so after grabbing a breakfast to go at good ol' Starbucks, we hopped back onto another double-decker bus for our "free" ride down to the Seaport.  It was really, cold this particular morning, so we rode at the top still, but under a plexi-glass cover for a little wind blocker.  Our tour guide, this time, was so funny with his dry, German humor.  He reminded me of my grandfather a bit, with his accent, enthusiasm and silly jokes.  It was nice to eat my breakfast on the bus and not worry about taking pictures for a minute.

This was a random park (Titanic Memorial Park, I think...) on our pit stop to Starbucks for a restroom break on our way to the Seaport that had a gorgeous fountain.

At last... we arrived at the Seaport stop to hop in line for our Broadway tickets.  The ticket booth opened at 11 a.m. and we arrived around 11:30 - eeek!  Thanks to Kimby for taking the picture of the line - it seemed SO long, but moved pretty quickly.  I think we were in line, maybe 20 minutes.  We didn't know if we would get our choice tickets, but we were open to about anything.  Of course, we wanted to see Wicked, but were pretty sure those would be gone.  Our other options were Chicago, Phantom of the Opera and Rock of Ages.  We were open to The Lion King, which I had heard was beautiful and others as well.  I mean, it's Broadway, so no show would be bad!  After a little persuasion, I asked if Kimberly would be ok asking for Phantom tickets as the first choice, instead of Chicago.  It's just classic!  When it was finally our turn, we came out with Phantom tickets, 20 rows back on the orchestra level!  Both of us were giddy as we walked out with our tickets in hand... haha!


Since we had a bit of time and it was lunch time, we decided to hang around the area a bit.  Lunch at the Seaport Cafe was nice, as we sat out on the patio which sat on the boardwalk, overlooking the pier with views of pretty boats, the Financial District Skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge.  I had a Garden burger with fries, and could actually see the veggies in the patty.  I know that sounds weird, but most of the ones I've eaten have been seasoned very similarly to a burger and filled with rice and soy.  This one still had rice and soy, but you could see the chopped up red & green bell peppers which was made it very tasty.  Kimby ate a pretty Chicken Caesar salad - yum!



After lunch, we headed to take a quick (and FREE) ride on the Staten Island Ferry to see Miss Lady Liberty and to rest for a few minutes.  I'm kicking myself for not having rented a zoom lens on this whole trip, especially for the Statue of Liberty picture (sorry Lady!).  We did encounter a rather nasty lady on our Ferry ride to Staten Island.  Everyone was opening the windows to get a good shot of Lady Liberty, so we finally found one window that was untouched!  Excited, we took those seats, and opened the window to do the same.  About a minute into opening the window, the lady nearest it, told Kimberly to "CLOSE the WINDOW, already!!!"  OK, lady, DON'T sit by the window if you're scared of a breeze!  We decided to move on...some people!

In our new seats, Kimberly actually struck up a conversation with a true Staten-Islander.  They talked for a minute about how that was her normal work ride to and from Manhattan.  Kimby also confirmed that the Mob Wives... are REAL, lol!  The girl we spoke to was very friendly and had a good sense of humor, thank goodness!  She also let us know that we stuck out just a tad, haha!  We switched ferries at Staten Island on our way back to Manhattan.  All in all it was about a 30 minute ride, round trip.  We saw some neat things on our enjoyable walk to the ferry, so I'll add some of those, as well.  OH and although the pigeons were everywhere and somewhat annoying, they definitely know how to get around the city!


Since we were in the area, our next stop was the nearby Financial District to catch a glimpse and picture of the Charging Bull.  I didn't realize how popular this thing is!  It was gated with those temporary metal gates, and someone was actually manning the thing, helping people take their picture if they were alone and making sure that each person didn't hog the time with the bull.  A cop was even on site, just in case.  There was one group of friends that took one picture and then scrambled in to get a few more combos of photos with the bull and different friends.  This made the attendant pretty angry and he started yelling, "Only ONE picture!!!" several times, haha!  He threatened to have the police throw them out!



On our walk through the district, we did see a wedding party having their pictures taken and some other famous places.  Since I hadn't had a slice of pizza or a hot dog from a street vendor, I went for a salty pretzel instead! 


By this time, our phones were very low on battery, our feet were shot and we needed time to get back to the hotel to freshen up for our show.  It took us a little while to find the correct subway terminal, but we finally ended up going back to the Staten Island Ferry where there was terminal we needed to go back to Times Square.  I ended up enjoying our subway rides, as they were super fast, compared to walking.  It took us a whole ten minutes to get from the southern tip of the island to Times Square, just south of Central Park.  We made it to our hotel around 6 p.m.  We were still full from lunch and, well, I had just eaten about half the pretzel...so we decided to skip dinner, since we really didn't have time anyway.

Traveling to our show proved another adventure, as we were late leaving after resting and then debating on what to wear, etc.  At 15 minutes until 8:00 p.m., we figured we could just grab a cab and get to the show on time since it was just a few blocks.  However, that didn't turn out!  We spent 5 precious minutes sitting in traffic and Kimby forked out $6 to the cabbie and let him know we'd try it on foot instead!  I steered us the WRONG way (oh my), so we spent about 10 minutes finding our way back and 10 minutes running/walking, heels and all to our show.  Needless to say, we were about 10 minutes late to the show, but we weren't the only ones, thank goodness!  The usher lead us to our seats and we sat down, fanning ourselves with our programs, because we were hot from running!  Luckily the show had just started.  That's how the Metcalfs do things, haha!  It was beautiful and the singing was perfect.  I love this soundtrack and was so happy to finally get the full Broadway experience!



The show was such a perfect way to end the night and we were exhausted!  I caught a few shots of the area as we walked back to our hotel and it was a mad house.  That's expected though on a NYC Saturday night.  One person stopped to pose for us and gave us a laugh.  How fitting that he was selling tickets to a comedy club!




We were asleep before we hit the pillows it seems.  Good night NYC.... until tomorrow!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

wow! what a jam-packed post! looks like you two had so much fun and got experience a ton of things. plus you both look super cute and like you are having just the time of your lives! i've enjoyed reading about your time in NY

Rachel said...

Love all your photos! You guys took some fun ones! And your Statue of Liberty photo turned out much better than mine...I didn't have a (long) zoom lens either! Glad you enjoyed Phantom! We ran into those Comedy Club guys too. :)

Mommy said...

Glad you had so much fun!

Lindsay said...

Great post! I could just imagine everything from your post. So fun! I am exhausted after reading. :)